U.S. Pat. No. 3,076,681 issued Feb. 5, 1963 to Erik G. Erson et al., assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses a locomotive fluid pressure brake apparatus wherein a temporary suppression of an automatic train control brake application is provided as the engineer moves a handle of an engineer's automatic brake valve device from a release position into an application zone and thence to a full service position after which the engineer may manually effect a permanent suppression of the automatic train control brake application by moving the handle from its full service position selectively to a suppression, handle off or emergency position. Such manually obtainable successive temporary and permanent suppression of an automatic train control brake application necessitates that the locomotive be provided with a brake valve device having the necessary apparatus to effect the desired results upon movement of the handle of the brake valve device to each of its several positions. It is apparent that such a brake valve device is necessarily large, complicated in its construction and, therefore, expensive.
Accordingly, it is the general purpose of the present invention to provide a railway locomotive brake apparatus that embodies a small, simple and inexpensive valve device and a number of other simple and inexpensive valve devices, some of which are identical and are carried in large quantities in locomotive builders' storerooms. These several valve devices are so connected together by conduits as to enable the engineer by releasing fluid under pressure from the train brake pipe to suppress an automatic train control brake application by use of this fluid under pressure so long as it is being released from the train pipe to atmosphere via a restriction. Thereafter, the brake cylinder pressure developed as the result of this reduction of brake pipe pressure automatically provides a permanent suppression of the train control brake application until a brake release is manually effected by the engineer upon the track signal changing to clear.